Links

• The New York Times has an article on the Obama Administration's approach of having the rich pay for their spending initiatives.

• An interesting map of white male life expectancy throughout the United States.

• Last night's John Stossel segment on Canada's health care system.

• Time magazine has a series of pictures on Chinese investment in Africa.

• A Washington Post story on how the sausage is being made in the health care reform effort. Excerpt:

In recent months, there has been much GOP criticism of Democrats for passing legislation that some lawmakers have not read. But the bills are not exactly beach reading. They are legal documents crammed with legislative coding, sentence fragments and assorted gibberish that modifies laws already on the books somewhere. To really understand what a bill says, you'd need to have the existing laws memorized.

Here's a fairly typical passage from H.R. 3200:

Section 1834(a)(7)(A)(iii) of the Social Security Act (42 U.S.C. 1395m(a)(7)(A)(iii)) is amended

(1) in the heading, by inserting 'CERTAIN COMPLEX REHABILITATIVE' after 'OPTION FOR'; and

(2) by striking 'power-driven wheelchair' and inserting 'complex rehabilitative power-driven wheelchair recognized by the Secretary as classified within group 3 or higher.'

And that goes on for a thousand pages.